Album Notes

"this duo can create suspense : sparse clarinet tones, and the use of extended techniques on the piano strings, make you want to know what is coming next, how these otherworldly sounds will evolve, merge, bounce back. Without working with themes or even recognisable patterns, the two musicians master and integrate the legacy of their training : from classical music, jazz, blues to more modern aspects of new music and avant-garde, nicely navigating between romantic lyricism and abstract tension and discovery, this is music with character and vision. Both are also great at using silence and pace in the development of their improvisations."

Stef Gijssels,
http://freejazz-stef.blogspot.com/2010/05/piano-and-reeds.html


‘Border Patrol' was a very private musical meeting between Niko Meinhold from Berlin and Noel Taylor from London. No geographical borders were crossed during the improvisations, but both musicians seem to weave in and out of different styles of playing, at times transgressing so far into melodic territory that at one moment their music might appear to be located in 19th Century Romanticism, whilst at the next it might flirt with the Blues, before fragmenting into very recognisably 21st Century improv. Both players give themselves over to a kind of auto-suggestion where a chance chord or rhythmic pattern invokes a musical thought. This is not to say that the music is indiscriminate – there is a very strong sense of shared restraint and a common feel for the shape and pace of the pieces as they develop. Neither of them would claim to have passed over any new musical boundaries, so much as to have revelled in occupying a musical no-mans land, where borders can be crossed and re-crossed without constraint.